Напольная акустика — Venture Audio Encore

The Encore is the most compact tower of the Venture Audio Ultimate Series, sitting below the Ultimate MKII in cabinet size and driver count. It keeps the slim V-shaped enclosure that Venture has used on its earlier floorstanders, where the side walls converge towards a narrow front baffle. Venture Audio began in 1986 under its founder Didi, and since 2001 the company has designed its own drivers to suit the gentle filters it fits in every speaker, and the Encore uses these in-house units throughout.

Key specs that matter

Venture builds the Encore as a passive three-way speaker with four drivers. At the top is a 1.5 inch AGC dynamic tweeter, below it a 5 inch CFGC midrange, and two 7 inch AGC woofers handle the bass. The quoted frequency range runs from 30 Hz to 40,000 Hz. Sensitivity is 87 dB and nominal impedance is 6 ohm. Venture states that the Encore will take up to 300 W from an amplifier without clipping, and asks owners to allow a minimum of 24 hours of use before judging it. The cabinet stands 112 cm tall, is 30 cm wide and 38 cm deep, and weighs 60 kg. Three finishes are offered - mirror-polished piano black, rosewood veneer and Macassar ebony veneer, each under a high-gloss polyester coat.

Engineering and use context

Every Venture loudspeaker uses first-order networks with a slope of 6 dB per octave, built by hand with point-to-point soldering, and each part is tested before and after assembly. Such shallow slopes keep phase shifts between drivers small but ask a lot of the drivers themselves, which is why the brand moved to its own designs. In the AGC woofers the graphite composite matrix is made with abaca pulp, whose long fibres give a stiff, light cone. The brand's cabinets for the Ultimate and Quantum lines are laminated from HDF sheets interleaved with solid hardwood, while internal vertical and horizontal bracing divides the enclosure into compartments. The high-gloss finish is a polyester coat about 1300 microns thick, which Venture says also helps damp panel vibration. Reducing the front baffle area by tapering the sides limits reflections from the cabinet edges.

Pairing

The impedance places no unusual current demand on a transistor amplifier, while the moderate sensitivity favours an amplifier with a healthy power reserve, and the high power limit leaves room for large stereo or monoblock power amplifiers. A low-powered valve design would use up its headroom sooner with this efficiency.

Alternatives

The Venture Audio Ultimate MKII is the next floorstander up, using three 7 inch AGC woofers, 90 dB sensitivity and a 115 cm tall C-shaped cabinet.